Cruise Control
by Mizufae
Summary: "You know, I just want to drive down 101. All the way down. Just pick a day, leave for the coast, and keep going south until I don't need to go anymore." Seddie, of course.
1. Chapter 1

Sam's phone rang. She rolled up out of her bed, tore her headphones off of her ears, and checked to see who it was. Freddie's face, a lopsided smirk on his mouth as he peered up from a laptop, glowed on the screen.

"Yeah?"

"Hey. Look out your window."

Sam pushed aside her curtains and pressed her face against the glass. It was sunset, a little wet, but she could see something very red idling in her driveway. Disregarding her lack of pants, Sam pushed up the sash on her window and thrust her head out, slapping her phone back to her ear. The cold February air gusted into her bedroom, threading around her hair and curling her toes.

"No way! You got it already?"

"Yes way. Socko came through! Can you believe it?" Freddie honked the car's horn in jubilation. It sounded a little squeaky, like Freddie when he gets offended. Sam laughed, and waved at him from her upstairs window.

"Do you know that there's a rust spot on your brand new trunk?"

"Don't belittle my car, Sam! And get yourself down here. We're going for a spin." Freddie had rolled down his window, his elbow hanging nonchalantly out the side. He leaned out and cupped his hands around his mouth. "And I don't care if you need to put on pants!" he shouted up to her.

"Okay okay, hold your horses." Sam scuffled around her bedroom, finding the nearest pair of rumpled plaid shorts. She was freezing. Sam shut her window and opted for leggings, too. She rumbled down the stairs, bypassing the cat on the landing.

Sam's mom was in the den, watching some television. "Where do you think you're going?" she asked, flipping the channels.

"Freddie."

"Oh, well, that's all right then. Don't scare the boy senseless." Upon hearing Freddie's name, Sam's mom relaxed her minimal concern, and resumed her interest in the TV.

Sam found her coat on the way out, and slammed the blue door behind her. She hopped down the steps, away from her little yellow house, and appraised Freddie's acquisition.

It was ancient, likely older than Freddie was. It needed a good scrubbing and an entirely new paint job, not to mention the dilapidated bits on the roof and trunk, but it was, overwhelmingly, bright red. It was huge, angular, and probably turned corners like a whale. Freddie sat proudly behind the wheel, gesticulating with a chipper grin. Sam swallowed her laughter, and opened passenger's side door.

"Oh my god, red leather interior." It squeaked under her thighs as she slid in. The dash was covered in a faux wood grain, and the radio was ancient enough to still have a physical dial. It smelled like grandparents and hastily deodorized cigarette smoke.

"So what do you think?" Freddie asked, a bit nervously. He rubbed his palms on the top of the steering wheel.

"You've bought a boat, Fredward." She glanced around, at the manual windows and locks, wondering just how many miles this car had on it.

"It isn't a boat, Sam. It's a 1992 Lincoln Town Car with Signature Series trim level in Cherry Red. If I take care of it, it will run forever."

Sam crossed her arms, the musty seat creaking behind her back. "Still a boat."

"Ah, but it is *my* boat." He lifted a finger into the air to punctuate his point.

Sam shrugged. "So why isn't Carls along for this inaugural joyride?"

Freddie relaxed his rigid posture and sighed. "She's on a date with Trey."

"Touchy-feely Trey?" She winced.

"The very same."

"That boy is such a slut. But at least Carly knows what she's getting into." Sam slapped Freddie jovially on the elbow.

"I already gave her the emergency bailout call. Evidently she's having a great time and didn't need a rescue." His eyes rolled as far back as possible, recalling Carly's bubbly voice over the phone.

Sam leaned up around over the seat and peered into the back. "You could fit a cow in that bench seat!"

"Speaking of which, let's go get some dinner." Freddie turned the key and the car rumbled smoothly to life. He grinned, a mile wide, and pulled out of Sam's driveway. "Seatbelts, please."

*

They stopped at some cheap Greek place on the edge of the city and ordered gyros and fries to go. Sam packed her pockets with ketchup packets while they waited for their order to come up. "You know I'm not paying, right?"

"Of course not." Freddie set the warm food on Sam's lap when they got back to his car. She inhaled deeply. "Not yet!" he chastised, as Sam reached a hand into the bag for a fry.

They drove about half an hour away, to a lake outside of Seattle. On the way, he filled Sam in on the art of negotiations with Socko. She'd known Freddie wanted a car more than anything, but it was only ten days after his sixteenth birthday. Instead of a party, he'd had a trip to the DMV and a driver's test. Sam had been sixteen for ten months now, and the idea of having enough money saved to buy a car, let alone one that actually ran, was completely unbelievable.

"Spencer must have told Socko about my mom." Freddie explained. "When he called me up to tell me he had an affordable Lincoln, he said something like 'she's a fine getaway car, if you know what I mean.' And then he sort of chuckled. It was creepy, but I decided not to ask."

Sam wondered if Freddie had checked for bodies in the trunk.

The sun was almost done setting when Freddie pulled to the side of the road, next to a little jut of land poking out beyond the railing. Sam looked curiously around. "Where the hell are we?"

"Oh, I don't know, I just picked a road and went with it. This seems nice, right?"

"What, are we going to have a picnic?" Sam peered at him in the dusk.

"I brought folding chairs! Open up the trunk. Don't mind the bodies." Freddie took their dinner out of Sam's lap and hopped the waist-high barrier that kept cars from driving straight into the water.

Sam opened the trunk and found two camp chairs, some blankets, and a flashlight. She grabbed them all and followed Freddie out to the edge of the water. The cold air rippled the surface of the lake, breaking up the remains of the sun's glow.

"So, sweet ride. Needs a name." Sam bundled under her blanket, stealing bites of Freddie's gyro.

"I'm thinking something like, the Bensonmobile." Freddie chewed, very seriously.

"What? No. That thing's got a backseat for twelve. I'm calling it the Love Boat."

"You're such a freak!"

"And you're an enormous prude. Don't tell me you didn't think about it when you bought the thing. I bet three generations have been spawned in that backseat!" She threw a french fry at his head and they laughed. A pause, and then, "Your mom is going to freak, and then use like twenty different kinds of bleach before she will be okay with you touching your own car, you know."

"My mom is exactly the reason I wanted to get that car."

"What, so you can tool around town and drive to your mother-son pottery classes in it?" Sam pushed at his leg with her foot, and he rotated his chair a little so she could prop her feet up on his lap.

"We made some lovely mugs in that class, Sam!" Freddie arranged the blankets to overlap, and rested his forearms on her shins.

"Whatever. You'll never get out from under her thumb."

Freddie scowled. "You know, I just want to drive down 101. All the way down. Just pick a day, leave for the coast, and keep going south until I don't need to go anymore." He slapped his palms together and shot a hand out, pointing over the now dark water. The breeze wafted onto Freddie's face, meshing the clear scent of the lake with the vinegary tang of ketchup and fries.

Sam reached over and flicked on the flashlight. "Do it."

"What? No. I couldn't. Like you said, Mom would freak. She'll have enough to talk about in therapy as it is, once she sees the Love Boat." He burrowed his arms back under the blankets, sandwiching Sam's calves between his elbows and lap.

She shined the flashlight in his eyes. "Benson, you are an unbelievable dork."

"Look, Sam, I'm not like you. I can't just up and leave. I can't make decisions like that."

"Then make decisions like me! Look, it doesn't have to be right now. You can go when it's warm, for one." Sam shivered a little, and sat up in her seat, curling her legs further onto Freddie's.

Freddie chuckled, a little sadly, and fidgeted with one of Sam's shoelaces. "If I made decisions like you, I'd probably be dead by now. Or at least in juvie. You've only stayed out of trouble as long as you have because of me and Carly."

"And my feminine wiles, don't forget those."

"And your feminine wiles." Freddie watched Sam pick the remains of the gyro out of her teeth by the shine of the flashlight she held in her free hand.

"Well fine then," Sam continued after flicking something off her fingers. "I'll be you. I can pull it off for at least week, I'm sure. I've probably saved up enough responsibility for the both of us, by now."

"What do you mean?"

"When we go on this road trip of yours, I'll only come with you if you promise to try to think like me. Be like me. Just for a little while. You know you want to." She looked up at Freddie and cracked a huge, affable smile. "You have to stop worrying so much all the time."

"But, that's what I'm best at."

"I'll do all your worrying for you. I promise." Sam stood up, brushed a few crumbs off her shirt, and thrust out her hand. "Do we have a deal, here, or am I going to have to make a bet with you?"

Freddie, still sitting, looked at Sam's hand with concern. He reluctantly put out his hand, and Sam pulled him up so he was standing. They shook on it. "Deal. I couldn't handle the consequences of a bet."

They gathered the chairs and blankets, and headed back to the looming bulk of Freddie's car. He took the short way back to Sam's house.

"Hey, how did you get out of the house to buy this thing and stay past dinner, anyway?" Sam hovered around the open passenger's side door, not quite wanting to call it a night.

"Mom was put in charge of the hospital's valentine's day singles mixer."

Sam's eyes widened. "I hope the doctors are fans of tofu hearts with red food coloring."

"I'm just hoping someone spikes the punch enough." Freddie nervously rubbed his hands together, looking at Sam out of the corner of his eyes.

"Happy valentine's, by the way." Sam mentioned, as off the cuff as possible.

"Yes. To you as well." Freddie waited a moment, unsure of what to say.

"Well, it's freezing! Goodnight!" Sam shut the door, turned and ran up the driveway, huddling in her coat. She ran inside, shaking off the worst of the chill, and picked up the family cat. Her mom was still in the den, the blue glow of the television peaking from around the corner.

"How was Freddie?" she asked when Sam's reflection appeared in the screen.

"Senseless, as usual."

**A/N This is going to be around 10 chapters long. I'm writing in highly unfamiliar territory, so I'm doing lots of research for the subsequent chapters. As such, progress will be slower than my normal rapid writing, but I'll absolutely have a chapter a week, if not more. I could not write this without the assistance of Aergonaut here on FF. Please leave a review, I'd appreciate anything you have to say. **


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N Whoever left me an unregistered review as lunamoody, would you PLEASE contact me? I need someone who has made this drive before, because I haven't, and I'm absolutely desperate for factual information and experiences. You can find many ways to contact me by going to my livejournal profile. Everyone else, thanks for your kind and thoughtful reviews. Please keep them coming, if you have them. Especially if you have any critical thoughts, because those always make my fic better. Thank you! Huge ups to Aergonaut, whom I've coerced into essentially being my beta. **

Freddie's car got the scrubbing of its nearly twenty year lifetime, courtesy of Marissa Benson. Every time he swung by Sam's house to get her for school, she'd stretch out in the back seat and smell a different cleaning chemical residue. Carly would chatter back to her about homework that day, while Sam would doze off for the fifteen minutes before they arrived at Ridgeway, smelling varying lemon-fresh or pine-clean artificial aromas. Slowly, after about a month of vigorous applications of rubber gloves and elbow grease, the Cesspool, as Marissa took to calling it, shined up quite nicely indeed.

In April, Sam turned 17. After a day full of cake, dancing, and more cake, Carly was picking up the mess in her living room while Sam sprawled out on the couch. Freddie sat next to her, wedged to the side near her feet.

Sam pushed at Freddie's legs. "Rub them!"

"Um, ew, no?" Freddie pushed Sam's feet off the cushions next to him, causing a chain reaction resulting in the rest of Sam slowly sliding off of the couch and onto the floor. Her face crunched onto a red plastic cup.

"I'm too tired to move," she whined into the carpet.

"This is what we term a sugar crash, Sam." He made quote fingers in the air. "Carly, do you know if her mom is going to come get her?"

Carly poked her head out from the kitchen, where she was rinsing soda cans in the sink. "No clue. She can stay here though, if she's okay with helping me clean up her mess."

There was a distraught moan from the floor.

"I'll take her home, okay?" Freddie stood up and kneeled down, gauging Sam's prone form. After a moment's contemplation, he pushed her with his foot, rolling her over onto her back. Her arms shot up and he yanked her up from the floor into a sitting position. "Come on, you gotta help me out here, I'm a weakling, remember?" Freddie mumbled as he shoveled Sam up over onto his back. She curled around over his shoulders, drooling a little on purpose. "Okay, that's just gross." Freddie spat out a little frosting-encrusted hair that got into his mouth, and made his hunched-over way to the elevator. Sam pushed the call button, obviously far more conscious than she wanted to admit.

When he dumped her unceremoniously into the passenger seat of the Cesspool, she uncurled herself and snapped on her seatbelt. "When are we going on our trip?" she asked suddenly.

"What trip?" Freddie put his car into reverse and pulled out of the parking spot.

"What trip? What trip! The trip down highway 101, you know, the coast to our right, the country to our left, the future in front of us, all that crap. Aren't you trying to figure out a time to do it yet?" Sam was awake again, fidgeting with the radio dials.

"About that. I don't think I can convince my mom to let me go. At least not for two years. Maybe after graduation?" Freddie turned smoothly onto the parkway, the yellow sodium lights flipping past.

"Bullshit. You promised. We made a deal!"

"Yeah but I can't just leave, Mom would send the entire Seattle police force after me. And then, she would go to Canada and recruit Mounties."

Sam shrugged. "So don't tell her you're leaving."

"I'd have to get her out of the house for like, two weeks, and convince her to leave me on my own? Are you kidding me? You have seen me try to lie before, right?" Freddie risked a glance away from the deserted late-night highway to look at Sam. She was crossing her arms.

"Yes. Your mom will believe anything you tell her. I have no fucking clue why you don't take advantage of it more often! Come on."

Freddie made a hemming and hawing noise. "Yeah, but it's just not, not me, okay?"

"That was the other part of the deal. You have to think of it from my perspective. I would totally lie to my mom to live out a dream. Lucky for her, most of my dreams involve roast beef."

Freddie grinned. "Well, fine. If I can pull off being a lying, cheating, horrible person like you, you have to help pay for the trip."

"What?" Sam gaped. "I don't do work, you know that!"

"Well, gas is expensive, and she doesn't exactly get good mileage, you know." Freddie patted the dashboard lovingly. "You have to hold up your part, Sam. You said you'd do the worrying for me, right? Well I worry about money. Among other things."

When he pulled into her driveway, Sam got out and came around to Freddie's window. He obligingly rolled it down. She leaned into the car and breathed quietly. "You wanna know what my wish was when I blew out my candles?"

"If you tell me, it won't ever come true." He leaned with his head on his hand, elbow on the top of the steering wheel. He yawned despite himself.

"I wished I could get the hell away from myself." And then she pulled her face away from his, turned and fled to her porch. Freddie waited, watching until she let herself in and shut the door behind her.

*

Seattle shivered and shook and woke up from a wet winter and a muddy spring. Freddie surprised his mother by obliging her numerous requests to come have a counseling session with her therapist, Dr. Wynkoop.

By the end of June, the plan presented itself. On one hand, Freddie felt awful for manipulating their mother-son therapy sessions for his own personal gain. On the other hand, he figured, if Dr. Wynkoop thought it was a good idea, why not push for it? Slowly, every week, as he listened to his mother pour out every fear conceivable and inconceivable, he nudged the topic of conversation the way he wanted it to go.

Then, Sam surprised him, first by actually passing junior year of high school, and second by getting a summer job. She took the deal to heart, making lists of things they might need, arriving at all hours to deposit them in the trunk of Freddie's car, and never once did she breathe a word of it to Carly. It was decided, mumbled between iCarly rehearsals and movie nights, that Carly wouldn't be able to handle not having a destination, a specific itinerary. And that's exactly what Freddie wanted to avoid.

Mid August, six months after the deal was made, Freddie drove his mother to the airport. He got out, kissed her goodbye, made sure she had extra handiwipes, reminded her that the laminated card with Dr. Wynkoop's contact information on it was in her left pocket, and peeled her off of him when she swooped in for another hug. "Mom, I'll be fine!"

"Are you sure? You can come with me! I should have gotten you a babysitter! What if you eat a musk melon?"

"I'm sixteen, and I am not allergic to melons of any sort. I will call you every day." He rushed back into the driver's seat before she could sweep him up into another bone-crushing hug. Marissa waved, worriedly, through the window to him, and he pulled around through the airport terminal.

When he got back to his apartment, Freddie shut the door behind him, leaned against the door and sighed. Two weeks alone. Marissa had finally, after months of convincing by licensed doctors, therapists, and her son, gotten up the resolve to go on a two week retreat on the other side of the Blue mountains. Dr. Wynkoop had taken Freddie aside in June and suggested it to him, citing Marissa's increasing stresses from the fears of city life. "I think she needs a solid change of scenery, at least a fortnight," Freddie had replied, a smile curling on his lips.

Broken from his reverie by a grumbling stomach, Freddie opened his eyes and headed for the kitchen. There, nearly every surface was covered in pieces of paper. It was the contract.

Dr. Wynkoop had started the paperwork as a coping mechanism for Marissa to handle the uncertainties of taking care of her son. A simple shampoo contract had been all that was needed at first, but as Freddie had struck out on his own, the paperwork had come in handy for other things too. The filing cabinets were full of them. This contract was new, and normally it would be carefully itemized and filed away with the rest of them, but Marissa had wanted to drive home a point. Every page had promises, signed by Freddie in his steady, looping signature.

"_I, Fredward Benson, promise to check my scalp every Tuesday for parasites._" And "_I, Fredward Benson, promise to wash each dish I use in at least 110 degree soapy water._"

It was a compromise. First, Marissa had demanded he have a babysitter. But when he'd explained, quite patiently he thought, that he was sixteen, had his own car and could take care of himself quite nicely thank you, Dr. Wynkoop had suggested this alternative. Freddie opened the fridge and pulled out some orange juice. Guiltily staring at page 27 of the contract, item Q, "_I, Fredward Benson, promise to use a glass and never drink directly from a beverage container,_" he chugged a few gulps straight from the carton. It was absolutely delicious.

Nowhere on the entire contract did it say "_I, Fredward Benson, promise not to lie to my mother repeatedly and go on a road trip with my best friend to nowhere in particular._"

*

Freddie slid into the oppressive heat of his red leather upholstered car. He tossed some sandwiches into the passenger's seat and headed out to meet Sam for an early lunch.

"What do you think you're doing? Someone get that nub out of the kiddy pool!" Sam blew her whistle, climbed down the chair, and stomped over to a large, rude, fourteen year old boy making problems in the shallow end. "When Sam says to leave the little kids alone, you leave them alone! This is your third warning!" She was a sight to behold, in her green swimsuit and shorts, with her eyes hidden behind reflective sunglasses, screaming her head off and wildly gesticulating. The boy slunk back, turning bright red.

Somebody started laughing behind her, and she felt her ponytail being yanked. "If you do that one more time, Clive, I'm telling your mother!" Sam whipped her head around to see Freddie laughing uproariously in her face.

"Oh, god, Sam, it's just so funny to see you defending the kids. You're like, hahaha, you're like the Jolly Green Lifeguard." He wiped the tears out of his eyes.

Sam put her hands on her hips. "This really isn't helping my cred, Benson." She eyed him, pressing her tongue to the inside of her cheek. "Is that lunch? What's the occasion?"

Freddie tossed her a sandwich as they made their way over to the little office by the pool entrance. A frisson of excitement went up his spine as he bit into half of a tomato and cheese on wheat. "Mom's gone. We can go."

Sam stopped halfway through signing the break sheet and looked up at him over the edge of her sunglasses. "You serious?"

"My suitcase is in the trunk." Freddie was suddenly very hungry.

"And here I thought you were gonna wuss out on me this whole time! Aw, look at you, I bet you packed extra handiwipes and everything." Sam slapped him congenially on the shoulder as Freddie choked on his hastily gobbled sandwich.

"They come in handy! Thus, the name!" But Sam was already off, ignoring his protests, to find her boss so she could squirm her way out of shifts for the next two weeks.

After Sam wheedled her way into switching shifts with a coworker on no notice whatsoever, she joined Freddie at a plastic table to one corner of the pool. He was halfway through a blue popsicle. "What took you so long? Couldn't be manipulative and whiny enough for once?"

Sam took the popsicle out of his hand and devoured what was left of it in two crunches. "No. He didn't want me to leave. Said I was the best kid he's got working this summer. Vivian apparently doesn't cut the mustard like one Sam Puckett." She started in on the other sandwiches Freddie had brought.

"Aw, Sam, look at you, queen of your little aquatic kingdom." Freddie echoed her tone from earlier.

"Hey, I just like bossing people around, you know that. Besides, free ice cream sandwiches!" She took her ponytail out and ran her fingers through her hair.

"But you got off, right?"

"Of course! Who do you take me for? I even got the cash he'll owe me once I sign out for the day." She fanned a check in Freddie's face.

It turned out that the day was over as of ten minutes previous, because after another turkey sandwich, Sam pulled her phone out of her bag and called her mother. "Hey Mom, I'm gonna go camping for the next two weeks. I'm heading out tonight. All my stuff is at Carly's. Yeah, I'll try not to attract any bears. No, don't worry about it, Freddie's got that part covered. Yes! I told you about this a month ago. I guess you just... weren't listening." Sam's eyes narrowed, her voice lowered. A pause, and then her face broke into a smile. "Exactly! You remember now, see, I told you. I'll be back in a while. Don't worry about me." She hung up, mission complete.

Freddie's mouth hung open, and it wasn't because Sam leaned back in her chair, thrusting her chest out and extending her neck in a languid stretch. "Do you have magical powers?" he asked.

"Yes."

"It took me three months to get my mom out of the house, and you just, how did you, what?" Freddie spluttered.

Sam sat back up and plonked her arms on the table, leaning forward. "One day, I may choose to share my secrets with you, young one. But not this day. Let's get the hell outta here!" She grabbed her bag and Freddie followed her out to his car, a shining red shape in the hazy sunlight.

*

One shower later, Sam and Freddie were staring at the open trunk of his Lincoln in the middle of the Bushwell parking lot.

"Batteries, cash, bottled water, blankets, more cash, Swedish fish, towels..." Sam was ticking off an itemized list in her head.

"And the files have been emailed to Carly, I did that when you were in the bathroom." They had decided, early on, in order to make sure Carly didn't freak when they went missing, to film an explanation and a couple extra iCarly segments to take the strain off of her shooting one or two shows solo. That had happened before, and it hadn't been good at all. Sam was pretty sure Carly knew something was up about Freddie getting to be on his own for a while, but they'd left the actual fact of the trip unsaid. Freddie trusted Carly not to make too big of a deal out of it.

"And the first aid kit's still intact." Sam patted its orange bulk, a hulking presence among the carefully stored items in the trunk. Freddie's mom had put it there first thing, day after Valentine's. "That's everything. Oh, and your nightlight, of course!" Sam pulled a small object from the front pocket of her shorts, waggling her eyebrows at him. She must have nicked it from his room after taking a shower in his apartment.

"You're doing an alarmingly good job of acting like my mother." Freddie scoffed deliberately, and took the nightlight from her hands.

"I'm just being you, Fredward." She watched as he tossed it nonchalantly into the back and shut the trunk. She chose not to say anything. "Now, get in that seat and drive!" She pushed him by the shoulders forward.

They both slid in at the same time, simultaneous oofs and settling noises.

"Seatbelts buckled?" Freddie fingered the steering wheel, nervously.

"Let me worry about that. And yes."

"Map of the coast in glove compartment?"

"Put it in drive, Freddie!" Sam pointed forward.

"Um, if I don't put it in reverse, first, we'll ram into that car in front of us, Sam."

Sam sighed. "Just, go already!"

Freddie swallowed, and shifted out of park.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N Thanks for your patience, everyone. Extra points to those who spot the recurring motifs! Please review and tell me what you think.**

At first, it felt like any of the myriad times Freddie and Sam had driven around the city by themselves. But Freddie drove with purpose, not to their favorite Indian takeout place, but to Aberdeen, where highway 101 really starts. It took about two hours. When he hit Route 8, on the way out from Olympia, Freddie slowly but surely pushed down on the gas, the rush of the hot air pushing through the open windows. Sam's hair whipped wildly around the car, frizzing in the humidity, as they pushed past the legal speed limit, and then the regular speed limit.

One of the things Sam liked about Freddie, not that she would ever tell him so flat out, was that he generally knew when to speak, and when to let the silence do the talking for him. The noise of the road, summer construction, cars whipping past, wind furling through their ears, had filled the quiet in the car as soon as they had pulled out of the Bushwell parking lot. They hadn't even tried turning on the radio. There was a mutual understanding that this part of the journey, at least, needed no conversation.

"Is your little Firecracker gonna handle going this fast?" Sam broke the grin-filled silence at last, as she felt the car shudder and change gears, Freddie pushing the car just a few more miles per hour faster.

There was a beat, as Freddie broke his concentration from the road. Then he lifted his chin in her direction. "What, can't handle a little speed, Puckett?"

"Oh, I can handle speed. It's the idea of your big red bucket of bolts falling apart underneath us that's got me a little concerned."

Freddie eased up on the gas a little as they wound past a few farms, and shot back in among the forest.

Sam tied her hair up with a practiced motion and a few bobby pins, and leaned her head towards the open window. She let the rush of air and the rhythm of rotating trees lull her into a bit of a trance that was only broken when she felt Freddie slapping her on the shoulder.

"Shades, I need your shades."

"Where are yours?" She handed her sunglasses over anyway, as the coast burst out into view. The sun sparkled on the water and they both squinted.

"In the trunk. We should pull over, get some snacks, don't you think?" Freddie looked to his left, where the sign pointing to 101 led the way.

"Yeah, pretzels are in the trunk along with your shades."

"No, I'm hungrier than that."

They turned right, into Aberdeen, instead of left across the bay down 101, and pulled into the parking lot of a mini-mart. Sam hopped out, stretching her limbs, bending her back and popping her neck. Freddie strode with purpose into the store, Sam following. She watched with avid curiosity as Freddie proceeded to purchase easy-cheese in a can, a package of Fatcakes, one of those pepperoni sticks of indeterminate age, and a Peppy Cola.

"Did I miss anything?" Freddie turned around and looked at Sam over his armful of junk.

"Well, what are you going to put the cheese on?" Sam really wasn't sure what Freddie was aiming for.

He looked perplexed. "Don't you normally just squirt it straight into your mouth?"

Sam laughed silently, and added a box of crackers to the pile.

Three minutes later, they were stretched out, sitting on the Firecracker's enormous hood. Freddie voraciously downed the Fatcakes, his expression inscrutable behind Sam's oversized shades.

"So what, exactly, is the point of you eating all this?" She daintily licked some cheese off her fingertip.

Freddie stopped, mid-chew. "I'm trying to be you!" he exclaimed through a mouthful.

Sam looked up from her fingers and laughed straight in Freddie's face. "What the hell would you want to do that for?"

Freddie swallowed, recalcitrant. "So I can get onto 101, that's what for." Sam just looked confused, so he continued. "Look, okay, you said, it was part of the deal right, I have to make decisions like you would make, and you said you'd do my part for me, right?"

Sam nodded, curiously.

"So I can't do it, alright? I'm two hours away from Seattle and Mom has no fucking clue I'm here and 101 is right there and I can't drive my damn car onto the highway. We could die out there! We could get into an accident, and get all our stuff stolen, and we could die! I could kill you!" Freddie was taking bite after bite of the pepperoni, chewing ferociously through his entire rant.

Sam put her hands up to Freddie's chest, fingers spread. "Woah there, Speedy! We're not gonna die. You're not going to kill me. I'd kick your ass way before that could happen." She reached up and pulled the sunglasses off of Freddie's face, revealing his wide eyes. She put them on and leapt off the hood, walking around back to the trunk. "So you're trying to tell me that you're eating all my favorite snackfoods in order to channel my uncanny ability to disobey authority?" Her voice came through muffled, her head deep in the cavernous trunk of the Lincoln.

"Well, something like that, I guess?" Freddie squeezed some cheese onto a cracker and chewed it resolutely.

"Look, dorkster, we made a deal, right? And I keep my deals. We're going to head down the highway and have a damn fine time and screw destinations. And when you feel like you've finally gotten your fill of the coast, we'll head back, and Mommy Benson will have no idea you were ever gone, except that the Loveboat here will smell like the real ocean instead of Ocean Breeze air freshener." Sam had come back around from the trunk, a few things in her hands.

She climbed back up onto the hood, and pulled Freddie forward by the collar of his shirt. "I'll do the freaking out when required. You're not allowed. Got it?"

"Got it." He squirmed a little, but Sam didn't let go of his collar. Instead she reached over with her other hand and placed his own sunglasses on his face. Then she let go, dug into a pocket, and took out a package of handiwipes.

"Clean up. You've made a mess."

Freddie lowered his sunglasses and peered over them at her. Wordlessly he asked if she was being serious. She looked back over her own shades at him with an affirmative.

Then he spat laughter and cracker crumbs in her face. They rolled on the hood, cracking up, shattering the tension like sugar glass, and when they recovered from the absurdity, they studiously wiped their fingers clean.

Freddie popped open the can of Peppy cola and chugged half of it. "Aaaah." He handed the can to Sam, hopped off the hood, and slapped his hands together. "My butt might not be shaped like a ham, but at least I can do this!" and then he belched, loudly. It was, by Sam standards, at least a 7 on the scale.

Sam kept her cool. She merely took a small sip of soda, pinky up, and looked askance towards him. "That was disgusting, Fredward."

"Get in the car, Sam."

*

The heat of the sunset warmed Sam's right side four hours later as they pulled into the town of Newport, Oregon. The place could only be described as cute. There were cute little shops on the cute little boardwalk and cute little restaurants with cute little signs hanging out front.

Freddie pulled into a gas station to fill up, and Sam ran off to the bathroom. When she returned, her enormously frizzed hair was minimally brushed, and she was thoughtfully patting her stomach. Freddie looked at her as he rested his hip against the side of the Firecracker.

"You wanna get some tourist grub?" He flipped his sunglasses up on top of his hair.

"Damn straight. Let's pick the one with the silliest sign."

It turned out to specialize in crabs. A big wooden crustacean waved patrons into the door. Sam and Freddie made faces at each other as they were shown by a kid their own age to a table for two in the back and asked if they would be getting the house specialty.

They kept making faces as they tied bibs around their own necks and fidgeted with the little mallets and other implements the waiter placed in front of them. "Don't know that I've ever had to smash my supper with a hammer before." Freddie fingered the weapon in question.

"Nothing like a little destruction with dinner, I always say." Sam lined her silverware up in a neat row.

The crabs were placed between them, steaming and fresh, wafting a briny scent onto Sam's face. She waggled her fingers and plucked one from the pile, and avidly whacked at it. Freddie followed suite, and soon they were happily picking out chunks of sweet meat from spiny knuckles, sucking liquors from their fingers and proudly displaying the finest pieces released from the crabs' ruddy shells.

"And that's how Mom ended up owning the house. Remember, never adopt a goat unless all your paperwork is digital." Sam finished her story between squeezes of lemon and bites of thick-cut fries.

Freddie laughed, impressed, and then jumped in his seat. "Ack!" It was his phone, on vibrate. He hastily wiped his hands and lifted the phone to his ear at the same time as hushing Sam with a finger to his lips. "Woah woah woah. Talk to Sam! She made me do it." Freddie was, to Sam's confusion, smiling. He reached across the table above the broken shells and handed over his PearPhone. "Guess who?" he asked quietly.

Sam put the phone to her ear.

"-do you mean Sam made you do it? Made you go on some whackadoodle trip to nowhere for no good reason and you're going to waste all your money and what about college apps, Freddie? What if you blow a tire? Do you even know how to change a lug nut because I-"

"Carly! Shut up!" Sam cut her off.

"Oh. Hi Sam."

"Hey Carls." She made a questioning gesture at Freddie, who just shrugged his shoulders and indicated that this was her responsibility.

"So I got your files finally, and watched them."

"See? We planned for you! It'll be cool, I swear."

"I knew you guys were up to something, but I didn't think you were just going to run off like that!"

"It was Freddie's idea." Sam threw a lemon wedge at his face to keep him from poaching her corn cob.

There was a scoffing noise from the phone. "He said it was yours!"

"No, I just made him do it. Look, we didn't bring you along because we knew you'd freak out, but come on! We'll come back in a little while and it will all be fine. Aren't you glad we at least told you where we went?"

"Well, yeah, I guess, but that still doesn't-"

"And aren't you glad to know we're happily eating crabs next to the beach?"

"Um, that sounds nice, but you-"

"And, I bet you're super impressed that we planned this since April and we'll only call you in an emergency, of which there will be none, so you shouldn't worry about us and have fun with your boyfriend of the week! Bye!" Sam held the phone up for Freddie to send his goodbyes, and then she hung up.

Freddie pocketed his phone. "You sure handled her."

"Yeah, well, sometimes she's more my mom than my actual one, you know?" Sam pulled at the bib around her neck.

"I know. Let's get the check."

They paid for their meal and walked ponderously down the boulevard, among souvenir shops and little cafes. Families dragged their crying children, tired from a long day at the beach, into stores to look at carved boats and useless doodads. Couples strolled, tittering and holding hands, looking for any excuse to touch each other. The darkening sky cooled the sizzling streets and Freddie let out a sigh. Sam bumped him with her shoulder interrogatively.

"Oh, well, what would you do now?" He put his hands in his pockets.

"Not sure. What would you do now?"

"I'd probably look for something to bring back to my mom as a present." He shrugged, expressing disdain for the idea. Sam rolled her eyes, but she was attracted to something in a window display.

"Oooh, let's go in here!" She curved right and strode into a shop filled with polished stones and cracked geodes. Carefully unearthed fossils lay in tissue-paper filled boxes, shafts of quartz and moonstone lined shelves.

"What are we here for?" Freddie asked.

"We should get Carly a thing. She likes shiny stuff, right? A present will make her feel better about us abandoning her." Sam leaned over to dig her fingers through a bucket of colorful tumbled rocks. They were smooth and cool, rolling around her knuckles and pooling in her palm. The shop smelled dusty in the same way good libraries do.

"True. She's a sucker for anything sparkly." Freddie pointed at some iridescent abalone shells, lined up carefully in a glass display case. Sam looked at them from the other side, admiring the oily rainbows pooled inside.

Freddie's phone rang again. The shopkeeper sent them a dirty look, but continued pushing the sale of an overpriced chunk of fool's gold to a shopping couple.

"Oh damn. It's Mom." He lifted the phone up to show Marissa's face smiling ominously. Sam smirked, and lifted a finger to her lips. Freddie took a deep breath.

"Hi Mom, how's the retreat? You get there okay?" Sam watched him through the glass case, his face only slightly warped.

"Oh, nothing much. Hung out with Sam at the pool. Yes, I wore the sunscreen. Yes, I locked up when I left. Yes, I used the chlorine rinse." His face was turning red, and he tapped restlessly on a jade bracelet that was lying open on the counter. The shopkeep saw this and bustled over to move it, but Sam picked it up and pretended to admire it.

"That's good, I'm sure you'll make friends soon enough. Are you feeling relaxed? Because, you have to stay relaxed. But don't stress out if you aren't feeling relaxed yet, you know?"

Sam flipped the price tag over, and decided to buy the bracelet for Carly. It had little sparkly spacers between small balls of crab-colored jade. She would love it. Freddie's lies filled the air until she heard "Love you too, don't worry, I'm fine." And then Freddie sighed enormously.

"You were brilliant!" A little positive reinforcement never hurt anyone.

"I nearly wet myself, Sam." Freddie was flushed. "Oh, for Carly?" He pointed at the bracelet on Sam's wrist. "It looks nice on you. Matches that lipstick you wear. You know, when you wear it."

Sam flushed to match Freddie. "Well it's for Carly. I'm buying a souvenir for my mom, get it?"

"Oh! Yeah she'll love it. Maybe it'll even keep her from killing us."

Sam handed over her cash to the man behind the counter. "Is it hot in here? It's hot."

"Yeah, it is. Let's get ice cream." And Freddie pulled her by the wrist out of the store.

He appeared to be in a jubilant mood, ordering double scoops of chocolate fudge pistachio ripple for them both. When he turned around, a waffle cone in each hand, he was grinning madly.

"I don't think I've seen you eat so much in one day before." Sam had removed the bracelet and safely stowed it in her pocket, nervous that it would get ice cream melted onto it. Her concern was warranted as she watched Freddie lick his wrist where a drop of fudge had already fallen.

"This whole thing is just making me really hungry. Lying, getting away with it, going on an adventure like this… It's unprecedented in the Freddie Benson lifestyle." They stood with their elbows resting on a wooden fence, overlooking a beach and the dark waves of the ocean. Freddie bumped his hip to Sam's. "Must be what it's like to be you all the time, right?"

She chewed a pistachio thoughtfully. "Not so much. I think mostly I just have a high metabolism."

"Sam, that's not what I meant and you know it."

They crunched through the tips of their ice cream cones, and headed back to the car to find a place to stay for the night. On the way back, Freddie reached out and grasped Sam by the hand. Blood rushed into her ears, it sounded like the tide coming in too fast.

"Where's your bracelet?" he asked, holding her wrist up to his face in the streetlamp light.

"Oh!" Sam stumbled over a cobblestone. "Just in my pocket. Didn't want to get it dirty. We should've gotten it wrapped."

Freddie dropped his hand from his face but kept holding on to hers. "I was worried for a minute, there."

A PearPhone is a magical thing. They found a motel on the edge of town in no time, paid for one night's stay to an extremely short man who stood on a footstool behind the counter in a dimly lit office, and shoved open the door to their room with a creak and a jangle of plastic-capped keys.

It was tiny and overwhelmingly orange. Sam wrinkled her nose from the powerful scent of cheap detergent. Freddie pushed his way in with a handful of things grabbed from the trunk. Pajamas, toothbrushes, towels, extra pillows, his nightlight.

"God I'm tired. Mind if I shower first?" Freddie dumped everything onto the double bed and, ignoring Sam's reply, repaired directly to the bathroom. The water rushed on with a high-pressure hiss.

Sam sat stiffly on the hard bed. After a minute or two, she picked up the nightlight, and plugged it into the wall.

The insistent sound of waves sussurated through Sam's brain. She knew it was dashingly romantic, to go off on a roadtrip together, but she hadn't had any indication of Freddie knowing that, too. There had always been a gradual change between them, growing closer, and somewhere Sam had always sort of assumed that they would figure it out and at least go on a couple of dates, or something, but why did it have to be here? Why did it have to be now?

She pulled the covers off of the bed and furiously fluffed the rock-hard pillows. The tension was nerve-wracking. Freddie had to go and be all hilarious and charming all day long, and Sam had absolutely no idea if it was on purpose, or if she was just seeing him in a different way because of the switch in scenery. The second he got out of the shower, Sam thought to herself, she was going to put it all out on the table, and ask him.

The shower turned off. Freddie emerged, damp, and wearing a blue t-shirt and boxers with little slices of bacon all over them. "Shower's all yours. Watch out, the water gets super hot." The building wave in Sam's throat froze. Freddie yawned; he didn't bother to cover his mouth. "Can you believe that earlier today we were in Seattle? It already feels like weeks ago." Then he plopped down onto the bed, separated the sheets from the blanket, and curled up onto his side. "I'll take sheets, you get blanket. Night."

Slightly stupefied, Sam gathered up her things and headed into the bathroom. When she came out, squeaky clean, the lights were off and Freddie was snoring softly, face-down into the repeatedly-bleached sheets. She navigated by the nightlight's glow.

She was annoyed as hell. He smelled insanely fantastic.

Freddie had slept over with her at Carly's before, of course, but they'd never exactly shared a bed. It infuriated her that he was so nonchalant about the whole thing. There was nothing to it but to get some sleep, and see if she was over it by the morning. She usually was, but she also usually wasn't sleeping next to him, their sides pressed up against each other through a thin layer of orange duvet.

Eventually, despite her ill-defined rage, Sam nodded off to the rhythmic rise and fall of Freddie's breathing. Tomorrow, it was onward, to San Francisco.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N Huge thanks to AColdSky who helped me with lots of specifics and let me ramble at her for this section. I hope you all like this; it's a bit different from what I think most of you are expecting going by your reviews. Keep them up, by the way. Reviews are the best. If you have anything to say, especially if it's critical, feel free to. Thanks!**

Freddie woke up at the crack of dawn, but he didn't open his eyes. His sheets were scratchy, his feet were cold, and he couldn't feel his left arm. There was something in his face. He mumbled and got something in his mouth, so he burrowed further into his pillow. Inexplicably, he smelled maple syrup. Maybe his mom was making pancakes?

He reached his right arm around and grabbed the soft cotton closer to his chest, tucking his feet under something warm, heavy, and smooth. There was definitely something wrapped up in the cotton, maybe an errant pillow, so he curled himself up around it.

Then it started to snore.

Sam squirmed a little in her sleep, settling back further into the warmth of Freddie's torso. Her neck rested heavily on his right arm and her hair was practically devouring his face. Their feet were layered one on top of the other, resting on the hideous orange duvet that Sam had, in the course of the evening, pushed down to the foot of the bed.

Despite the pins and needles in his arm, it was inexplicably the most comfortable Freddie had ever been. Then he opened his eyes and saw nothing but blond hair.

"_Oh my god,"_ he breathed into the back of Sam's neck. It was a delayed sort of fear. He didn't move at first, just idly feeling the soft pajama fabric around Sam's hip with his palm. But his mind was imagining about sixteen different ways she would break him open and make him pay for even thinking about being in this position.

All yesterday he had forcibly kept himself from flirting with her, and had only lapsed briefly by holding her hand on the way back to the car. He'd avoided her the second he realized they were going to be sharing a bed. Luckily, Freddie had several ways to deal with fear, and one of those ways was falling asleep.

He realized that he was still curved around Sam like some sort of possessive freak, so he risked it and scrambled away from her, letting her head fall softly onto the pillows. He crouched at the far corner of the bed, and wrapped the scratchy synthetic sheets around himself. She stretched lightly, but then curled back up, catlike, and resumed her gentle snore. He watched the rise and fall of her rib cage under the alarmingly thin cotton of her purple pajamas. Her feet inside her mismatched socks wiggled slightly, so he risked it and pulled the duvet back up over her body. She didn't wake up.

Safe from evisceration, Freddie got up to pee. He stared into the bathroom mirror while he brushed his teeth. The green fluorescent light made him look monstrous. He decided that Sam must never know how they had spent the night. He spat out his toothpaste and gargled three times, like he was supposed to.

Back out in the dawn light of the motel room, Sam was still fast asleep. Freddie pulled on a pair of pants, grabbed the keys and headed out to the car. The goal was to waste time until it was a reasonable hour, but he managed to do everything too quickly.

The grocery store was only a block away. Everything he needed for breakfast was all in the same aisle, conveniently displayed. The newspaper was boring, and the Sudoku was so easy that he finished it in under five minutes. Freddie considered driving around in circles for the next two hours, but eventually ended up back in the motel room, sitting in an uncomfortable plastic chair, watching Sam sleep despite himself. His butt hurt. Truly, if someone had decided to design the least comfortable chair possible, it would have been this chair. He sighed, and went to sit on the edge of the bed next to Sam. After a few minutes he lay back onto a pillow, carefully holding himself away from Sam's side.

The light in the motel room had mellowed. Freddie felt something warm cradled all along his back. Someone's arm was draped unceremoniously over his hip. He must have dozed off again. There was something pressed into the back of his neck.

Then he heard it. "_Oh my god._" It came from his neck, and it was Sam.

They mutually pulled apart and sat staring at each other, sleepily absorbing the situation. Then Sam broke the quiet. "Why are you wearing pants?"

Freddie looked down, noticed the pants and decided to play it cool. "Get up. Breakfast's already in the car." He gathered up what confidence he thought he might have, and chucked Sam's bra at her from where it was sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed in a pile of their things. He was out the door before she woke up enough to peel it off her face and retaliate.

When she came out twenty minutes later, he made sure to look bored. "ZapMaps says that San Francisco is only ten hours away. We can do five hours before lunch, five hours after lunch, and be there by seven."

Sam seemed less than talkative. She just shrugged, flashed him a brief smile, and settled herself into the passenger's seat. Freddie turned on the radio and they were off.

Almost immediately, he realized that this was going to be less than smooth sailing. The highway wound, following the coast tightly. And unlike the fantasies he had of zipping down the road at high speeds, wind whipping through his perfectly quaffed hair, Freddie found he could feel the wind buffeting his car. Sam leaned her head against the window, where he could almost always see the cliffs just yards away. Images of his precious Lincoln tumbling into the sea flashed in his head, and he slowed down to fifty-five.

About an hour in, while driving around a series of hairpin turns, he couldn't take it anymore. Freddie pulled over. Sam snapped out of her reverie and looked at him inquisitively. "Breakfast" he responded, and pulled his groceries out from the back seat.

They walked a few yards over to a scenic lookout. Really, it was a patch of asphalt off the side of the road, with a small railing to keep people tumbling off the cliffs to their deaths. The waves crashed relentlessly on the rocks below. They settled, cross-legged, with a box of cereal between them. Freddie handed Sam an apple and a bottle of milk.

"Granny Smith." Sam stated it with very little intonation.

"I saw it and I thought of you." Freddie grabbed a handful of sugar-puffs and took a sip of milk.

After a few minutes of crunching noises as Sam ate her apple, she chucked the core over the edge of the cliffs, pulled her hair into her usual half-ponytail, and looked at Freddie with a curious expression. "So, why do you want to get to San Francisco so bad?"

Freddie stopped eating his banana and thought about it for a minute, trying to think of a good reason. "I know I said I didn't want to have a destination in mind. But it's nice to have temporary goals, at least. Lets me know when I've accomplished something, right?"

Sam nodded, absorbing that particular twist of Freddie logic. "So, you're not driving as fast today as you were yesterday."

"Well I don't know if you've noticed but this road is a little scary!" He pensively chewed his sugar-puffs and looked away from Sam's gaze.

She shrugged. "It's cool if we don't get to SanFran by seven. We wanted to take it easy, right?"

"Guess so. But where would we stop for the night? I don't think there are too many cities between here and there."

"You let me worry about that. Just do your driving thing. And don't chuck us over the cliffs, if you can help it." She licked sugary crumbs off her fingertips. Freddie forced an uncomfortable laugh, and scrabbled up off the ground to follow her back to the car.

The winding road did not relent. Freddie was used to city driving, and the straightforward lanes of the Washington state highway system. This was an entirely different sort of road. He found himself slowing down more and more, feeling the heat literally and figuratively as the sun crested above them and warmed up the leather interior.

Luckily, breakfast seemed to have woken Sam up out of her funk. She gabbed over the rhythms of the classic rock on the radio, sharing stories of her weird family to fill the time.

"Did your mom and uncle Victor really run away to Canada when they were our age? Didn't they get stopped at the border?"

"The Pucketts can get away with anything they set their minds to, Freddie." She turned her seat and pointed a finger at him. "And don't you forget it!"

Freddie lifted his fingers up from their death-grip on the steering wheel. "I won't! Hey, look, I mean, we're doing this, aren't we?"

Sam huffed. "Yeah, I'm still kind of upset it wasn't my idea."

A little while after they crossed the state border, they pulled over for gas and lunch. Sam decided they would both have California turkey sandwiches, in honor of the journey. They sat across from each other in a teal vinyl covered booth, smiling avocado grins. Taking it easy was going to go slower than Freddie would have liked, but it had the upshot that they were both decidedly alive.

Sam poached his potato chips, like always. "Where are we?" she asked.

"I am not really sure." The second after he had said it, Freddie realized that it was true on more than one level.

He followed the signs. 101 curled around beaches, over cliffs, through small towns filled with the same stores as every other small town. They cruised through a flat of reeds, the estuary of a lagoon growing into a smooth and shining green field. Around five in the afternoon, Freddie stopped in another little town.

"I'm gonna call my mom."

"Great, cuz I gotta pee." Sam ran off to a burger joint to use their facilities while Freddie rummaged through the trunk for a bag of pretzels. He sighed, gathered his calm, and dialed the number his mother had called from the night before. He leaned against the side of his car, feeling the heat of the paint seep through his crisp striped button-down.

"Hello?"

"Hi Mom! I figured I'd call you first, today." He crunched a pretzel.

"Freddie, sweetie! Are you following the rules?"

"Um, I signed the contract, didn't I?" Cars whipped past across the railing that divided the parking lot from the highway.

"Of course you did." Freddie felt the guilt like a lump in the pit of his stomach.

"So how is the retreat? Are you doing okay?"

"Oh yes, there are so many interesting things to do here. And my roomy, you know the one I was worried about, she's so kind to me. She even let me put her toiletries away for her so I wouldn't have to rearrange them in the morning! Isn't that the nicest?"

"Good on you, Mom…"

Freddie let Marissa ramble for a few more minutes, learning about seaweed wraps, "the kind that don't trap you to a table!" and chakra alignment, until he spied Sam coming back towards him. The guilt, that had risen nearly to his throat, abruptly fell away.

"So I'm going to go get dinner now, Mom. I wanted to call before I started cooking anything." He waved Sam over and handed her the bag of pretzels.

"Be sure you don't use any knives, Freddie. You know how I feel about you with sharp implements. You could lose a finger!"

"I know, Mom."

"And when I get back, I want to tell you about Celiac disease, which I think we might both have…"

"Bye Mom." He rolled his eyes at Sam and she smiled through a mouthful of pretzels.

"I love you, Freddie!"

"I love you too." He hung up, watching Sam watch him.

She leaned an elbow up against the car next to him, and rested her head on her hand. "Seeing you lie like that is such a turn-on, Benson."

He smacked her lightly on the arm and got back into the car.

The sun set slowly over the ocean. When he looked over to Sam as they chatted about nothing in particular, the orange light lapped around the edges of her form. Soon enough, the highway turned inland, cutting away from the cliffs and the wind and heading into a dense patch of forest. They were the redwoods. Fog rolled gently along the ground of the trees, illuminating the beam of his headlights.

The light began to fade and Freddie realized that they were in the middle of what must be a national park, with nowhere to get dinner or to stay the night. They had snacks in the car, of course, but would it be enough to stave off Sam's voracious appetite? It seemed like civilization had stopped entirely upon entering the trees. Instead of pointing all of this out to his travel companion, Freddie decided to just push faster along the now straightforward highway. Maybe they'd get somewhere before too long.

Sam's attention was caught by something along the side of the road. "Bigfoot!" She pointed and yelled.

"Wait what?" Freddie followed her finger to a billboard. How odd. It was yellow, with huge red lettering, and a cartoon of a hairy creature. It read "Welcome to the home of Bigfoot!" The dot of the i was a footprint. He pulled over, right in front of the sign.

"Sam, you can't seriously believe in Bigfoot." He stretched his legs. Driving was hard work.

"Well no, but come on! How cool is that sign? Someone put it here. There's totally some kind of Bigfoot theme park here, I bet." She reached out and grabbed Freddie's hand. He leaned back and let her pull out the kinks in his shoulders.

"Oof, thanks. But, come on, it's getting dark. I bet they're closed, anyway." He leaned against the steering wheel.

Sam sighed and fell back into her seat. "I was wondering about that. We're in the middle of nowhere, aren't we. We need to find somewhere to eat and sleep."

"I thought you said you were gonna worry about that." This came mumbled from Freddie, who had his head nested into his arms.

"I am. Give me your Pearphone." She didn't wait for him to hand it to her. Instead, Sam reached over and extracted it from his pocket. At this point, Freddie didn't care. The mixed signals had breached level Ridiculous some time ago. He sighed into the backs of his elbows and watched the fog roll around in the headlights, listening to the clicks from his phone in Sam's hands.

"Oh, shit," she mumbled.

"Hrm?"

"No wifi."

"Great!" He slumped back into his seat and sighed again.

"Just keep driving. We'll find a hotspot soon, I bet." She gently prodded him in the ribs until he sat back up.

Freddie pulled back onto the road and rolled on through the dusk.

Night had wrapped itself around them thoroughly when Sam suddenly exclaimed "Yes!" and started poking at the phone again. "Turn left in five miles, Fredward. Mama has come through for you."

Sure enough, "Redwoods River Resort" was carved into a wooden sign in about five miles. Freddie turned left as instructed and pulled up to a cabin. Sam got out of the car and ran inside. She came back out in a couple minutes and gestured for Freddie to come inside.

It was like a combination general store and office. Behind the counter a girl a little older than him rested in a wooden chair. She waved, tired but smiling. Sam skipped up to him.

"We can park in one of their RV spots. Lauren says they don't care that we aren't a real RV as long as we only stay one night and don't trash the place." She had a paper map and brochure in her hands. "Well, what are you waiting for? Give the woman thirty bucks, already!"

Freddie blinked, a little unsure of Sam's plan, but went along with it anyway. He rummaged in his pockets for the money, and when he had found enough, Sam came up and prodded him in the back of the shins with her foot.

"Help me with this stuff." She had a pile of firewood in her arms. Having already decided to just go along with it, he lifted it from her and rested in on the counter as she flitted around and gathered a few other things.

Lauren gazed disaffectedly at Sam bouncing around the store. "She always like this?"

Freddie tore his eyes away from Sam for a minute. "She's like a puppy, you know? All movement one minute, and then down for the count. An hour later she's back at it."

"Just make sure you put the campfire out really well, okay? My dad will kill me if she sets the forest on fire." She smiled at him, her eyes crinkling.

Sam hopped up and paid for the firewood and a few groceries. "Come on, Fredwina. We're gonna go camping!"

Freddie followed her out the door. "But we don't have a tent!"

They drove downhill, among a warren of clearings cut into the forest. Sam pointed to one of them as the one he had paid for.

It turned out that Sam's plan was pretty simple. Make a campfire, eat hotdogs on sticks, sleep in the car. Freddie had never made a campfire, but apparently Sam had some experience with them. She sent him to the edge of the trees to gather sticks for the hotdogs.

He could hear a river rushing through the forest as he picked his way along the roots, looking for twigs by flashlight. The air was filled with a distinctive sweet, earthy scent. The redwoods arched above him and he felt a bit dizzy looking up at their crowns. He leaned against one and felt the fuzz of the bark under his hand and through his shirt. Taken all at once it was a bit overwhelming. The switch from the loud and salty coast to the ponderous and musky forest gave Freddie more vertigo than the height of the trees did.

Although it was hot during the day, as soon as night had fallen the temperature had as well. Freddie regretted not digging out a jacket from the trunk. He shivered, clutching a handful of thin branches in his hand, and wound his way back into their clearing.

Sam was crowing jubilantly over her fire. The flames lit her up from below, catching on the curls of her hair and the planes of her body, picking her out in tones of burnished gold and cool blue. She was smiling like a madwoman.

Freddie called across the clearing. "Lauren said not to let you set the trees on fire, Sam."

"That's what the bucket of water is for, you nub." She lifted up a metal bucket, glinting yellow in the firelight. It sloshed a little water over the side and sizzled on the edge of the fire. Freddie traipsed over and handed her the twigs. "Ah, these will do nicely. Go get that loaf of bread, would you?"

When he came back from the car with blankets, a jacket, and the bread, he watched Sam carefully burning the ends of the sticks. He asked what it was for. "To sanitize them, obviously. You think I'm just going to stick a hotdog on something bugs poop on?"

Freddie shrugged. "I don't know, you're you. And nice Nevel impression, by the way."

They sat next to each other on top of blankets covering the loamy ground, and Freddie experienced the joy of slightly burnt hotdogs on folded wheat bread. It was a fantastic dinner. Something about the crackly edges, the way they popped open when he bit into them, the curious smell of the trees mingling with the familiar scent of the bread, how the carbonized twigs left a smoky taste inside the hotdogs themselves. Freddie had never had anything quite so delicious.

After her third one, Sam sighed and leaned back onto her hands. "Not bad, right?"

"Not at all." Freddie huddled in his jacket, urging the warmth filling his stomach to extend to the rest of him. Sam picked up one of the blankets and wrapped it around herself.

"It got cold fast, didn't it?" she asked.

"Mmm, yeah." Something about the forest kept their conversation quiet and concise. He could hear other campers in the distance. A dog barked, someone was laughing. They watched the fire. Sam scooted closer, and then she was leaning into his side, her head at his shoulder. The blanket was between them.

"Here." She motioned with her arm and he let her wrap the blanket around both of them. Freddie wasn't quite sure what to do. He would have liked to know what exactly was going on, because he was pretty sure had he done this to Sam, he would've been flat on the ground, nursing a bloody nose, or at least some sort of bruise. As it was, he leaned gratefully into her warmth.

They supported each other's weight and studiously watched the flames and not each other for an unknowable amount of time. Occasionally, Sam would reach out and poke the fire with a stick, sending sparks floating upwards into the cloudy night sky.

Eventually, Freddie yawned. Then Sam yawned in response. He yawned again. "I think it might be bedtime," he suggested.

When Sam stood up Freddie shivered from the rush of cold air that filled the space where she had been leaning against him. She put out the fire and headed to the car. By the time he got there, she was all wrapped up in her blanket, in her seat which she had pushed back as flat as it would go. "You get the back seat, since your legs need to stretch more," she said as he leaned in over her, through the open window.

Freddie pulled out the extra pillows from the trunk and tried to get comfortable in the back seat. It wasn't ideal, considering that Sam's seat kept him from being able to lift his knees really. But Freddie had driven a lot that day, he was quite tired and stressed and still annoyed that he hadn't reached San Francisco, and he managed to fall asleep before Sam.

A couple hours later Freddie woke up to the movement of Sam's seat going back to its normal position. He bent his knees gratefully. Cool air wafted in as Sam opened and closed the door. She must be going to the camp bathrooms, he decided groggily. A few minutes later, just as he was nodding off again, he heard crunching footsteps coming back toward the car. The door at his feet opened. He heard Sam sigh, and mumble under her breath. Then she crawled up along the seat with him, lay down right along his entire length, and pulled another blanket over them both.

Freddie froze. Was she sleep walking? Did she know he was awake? When he didn't move or react to her for nearly a whole minute, he felt the breath of her sigh and heard a grumble from her throat, which was right by his shoulder. Then she grabbed his hands by the wrists and wrapped them around her waist.

He was falling asleep from fear, again. Freddie could feel it, welling up from his toes to his scalp, overwhelming him. He pulled Sam in towards his chest and hooked his legs around her calves and passed out, too afraid to do anything else.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N Continued thanks are due to AColdSky who knows medical type things, and Aergonaut who puts up with me, and Hyperactivecheskie who likes to squee and think thinky things. Please read and review if you have anything to say. I hope y'all like this chapter. **

They woke up at about the same time, still all twined together in the backseat of the car. Sam wasn't quite sure what she was feeling, emotionally, but physically, she was warm and comfortable.

This was a pleasant change from last night when she was trying to fall asleep. The front seat wasn't made for sleeping in; it had a lump in just the wrong place, and the chill had flooded in through the windows all around her. When she had gotten up to go to the bathroom after a couple hours of that torture, all Sam could think about was how she had woken up all warm and comfortable with Freddie that morning, and the coziness of sitting with him in front of the fire that night. Trudging back through the mulch covered path, she had made up her mind to just go ahead and trade dignity for personal comfort.

She hadn't been expecting him to so willingly hold her like he had, however. The chill of the morning still threatened their little bubble of human warmth, the early fog swirling thinly beyond the windows. Currently, Sam was staring at the curve of Freddie's collarbone as it curled up along his shoulder and disappeared under his cotton shirt. She wanted, more than anything, to bury her face in it.

Freddie's breathing became increasingly irregular, with slow, small sighs. She knew he was awake because his fingers stretched and contracted along the small of her back, like they had the morning before around dawn. She couldn't see his eyes to see if they were open yet, so she pushed herself as far out on the edge of the seat and craned her neck up.

"Yes?" he asked, sleepily.

"Morning." Sam wasn't exactly sure what else to say. Was he going to freak out?

"Is it? Let's go back to sleep some more." And he reached up with a hand and gently pushed her head back in towards his chest, straight to the spot between his neck and shoulder she'd been so interested in minutes before. There was a rustle with knees and feet, she wasn't sure whose, and the blue blanket that had gotten scrunched around overnight smoothed out comfortably.

"Umkay," she mumbled onto his skin. He sighed heavily and tucked his head in, already half-asleep.

The light was stronger, the fog had all but burned off, and Sam had an overwhelming urge. "I need to brush my teeth" she said to Freddie's collarbone.

"Mmm? You do have nice teeth," he mumbled into the top of her hair.

"Let go, Fredweird." Sam reluctantly squirmed out of his arms, and shimmied her way past his feet on her way to the trunk. Stretching briefly, she breathed in the smell of the forest, and found her little case of toiletries.

When she came back from the camp bathrooms, Freddie had gone. Sam noticed the loaf of bread and the jar of peanut butter were sitting on the passenger seat of the car. There was a note on top of the peanut butter, she saw. "_ river_" was written hastily on the back of a receipt.

Why wouldn't he wait for her to come back? Maybe he was off on his own, flipping out about last night? She bit the edge of her bottom lip. Freddie was prone to sulking, and right now they were off specifically on an adventure to combat sulking. It was her duty as co-pilot to fix whatever was wrong, she decided, shaking off the floundering flutters from the past few hours in the car.

Sam gave the Loveboat a once-over. What a stupid name; she couldn't believe it had stuck for half a year already. She grabbed a slice of bread, smeared a glob of peanut butter on it, folded it in half and stuck it in her pocket. She headed in the direction of the river, according to the little carved signs pointing the way.

The sound of the river water was completely different to the sound of the ocean to which Sam had become accustomed over the past couple of days. She found Freddie at a bend in it. The water pooled out, calm and slow, burbling over rocks, beards of moss dangling into the edge of the flow. He was holding his piece of peanut butter bread in one hand, uneaten, his back to Sam. What was he doing? He dipped a toe into the water, and withdrew it quickly, with a shudder.

Sam smiled, and decided not to interrupt, choosing instead to lean half hidden behind one of the soft redwoods. She watched him get his feet wet, after half a minute of waffling.

Then suddenly he started to flail his arms around, waving the bread back and forth at something. "Get away! Freakin' bee! Don't you know you'll kill me?" He nearly lost his footing in the edge of the river with all his movement. "You want this, don't you?" he waggled his uneaten breakfast at a spec in the air that was hovering around his head. In a spectacular expression of immaturity, Freddie took a giant bite out of the bread, and then chucked it straight into the river. Then he blew a raspberry at the bee. "How do you like that, huh? OH CRAP GET AWAY"

Sam's eyes widened as the bee started zooming angrily at his face. Way to go, nub. She knew Freddie was deathly allergic to bee stings, but she hadn't figured him to know how to piss off insects so efficiently when left to his own devices.

With very little noise, Sam shot out from her hiding place in the edge of the trees and ran out to the river. With a great heaving push, she shoved Freddie straight into the river. He let out a screech, wind-milling his arms like a cartoon as he lost his balance and splashed under the water. "If you stay under he can't get you!" she shouted to his spluttering, drenched face. Freddie stared back, shocked and sullen. The bee chose that moment to buzz up to his face again. He took a deep breath and ducked under the surface.

Luckily, in a few moments the bug lost interest and flew back into the trees. Freddie emerged reluctantly just seconds later. "Is it gone yet?" His floating head rotated warily.

"The wannabe assassin has fled the scene." Sam was sitting on the edge of the river, knees bent in front of her.

Freddie stood up to his full height. The water poured off of him in rivulets, the river only going up to his waist. "This is freezing! Why did you shove me in? And god knows how many parasites are in this water. What if I have leeches?"

Chuckling, Sam rolled her eyes. "You're welcome for saving your life. Next time, don't count on my rescue, if you're gonna be so ungrateful!"

He sloshed his way out of the river, his clothes soaking wet, and shook his hair at Sam so it covered her in little droplets. She covered her face with her arm and stood up. They started walking back to the their camping spot.

Freddie heaved a dramatic sigh. "You know the worst part?"

She arched an eyebrow.

"I lost my breakfast!"

Sam shrugged and pulled her folded bread out of her pocket, ripped it in half, and handed it to Freddie. She kept walking, chewing her half, without thinking much of it, but Freddie stopped dead in his tracks. A few paces on, she looked around behind her. "You coming, or are you communing with the trees and need alone time?" He looked up at her, blinked a couple times, and ran to catch up.

They'd almost made it back to camp when Sam heard a buzzing noise by her ear. The bee was back, it was still mad, and Freddie had a gob of peanut butter on his chin that Sam had intended to tell him about much later.

It happened fast. Before she had a chance to say anything, Freddie was shouting, in pain this time, his hand on his chin, his face an agonizing expression of terror. He was running faster than she had ever seen him, and she sprinted to catch up, following his panicked screams, and then overtaking him as he lagged, his knees buckling under him.

His words in Aberdeen came back to haunt her. "_We could die out there!_" he'd shouted, mouth full of sugar, eyes hidden behind sunglasses. And now he was making wordless noises of terror from that same mouth, his eyes wide open, watching Sam run to the trunk of his car.

She didn't know what to do, she realized. A sound came to her ears and she realized she had been screaming this whole time, too. The trunk had everything, there must be something to help, and a flash of orange jumped out to her. With unusual strength even for her, Sam wrenched out all the crap they'd so carefully piled up inside like a game of Tetris and unearthed Marissa Benson's huge first aid kit.

Within a minute Sam fled back to Freddie, who was still screaming, his eyes bloodshot, his rigid body still soaking wet from his dunk in the river. She opened the first aid kit in front of him and pleaded inches away from his face. "Tell me what to do! Tell me what to do!" His hand was still clutched to his chin, covering the bee sting. She ripped it away and clutched his palm tightly in hers. "FREDDIE TELL ME WHAT TO DO" she screamed, and that seemed to work.

He was hyperventilating, but he looked at the first aid kit and extracted an EpiPen. His mother's coaching kicked in. "Airway cutoff, jam in thigh, ten seconds" he gasped between heaving breaths, holding up the plastic cylinder. He let go of Sam's hand and tore the cap off. He swallowed, his eyes enormous. "I hate needles!" he shouted, lifting it up in preparation for stabbing his thigh.

Sam furrowed her eyebrows, and pulled the EpiPen out of his hand. He let out a strangled cry in protest. "You're breathing just fine!" she justified.

There was a pause where the only sounds were the deep breaths of Freddie sucking air gratefully into his lungs. Then he turned white as a sheet and collapsed back onto the ground. Seconds later he started laughing, great heaving gulping laughter, clutching his stomach and kicking his legs. Sam was frozen to the spot, watching his hysterics, still holding the EpiPen. Then as abruptly as he fell back, Freddie sat up again, and shouted one word. "OW!"

She dropped the pen back into the open first aid kit and rushed forward, crushing him in an enormous hug. "You idiot!" she whispered fiercely into his ear.

"This really hurts," he sulked, clutching Sam tightly.

Eventually they let go of each other. Sam was all wet down her front but she didn't notice. They dragged the first aid kit back to the car and Freddie hopped up onto the hood, kicking his legs in a release of nervous energy. "So I guess that's another thing Mom made up so I'd never leave her," he stated flippantly.

Sam found what she was looking for, her toiletry case. "Ahah!" she declared, upon finding her tweezers. Without asking, she stood in front of Freddie, her knees between his splayed, still-kicking legs. She unceremoniously grabbed his face and leaned in to look for the stinger.

"Is it supposed to hurt like this?" Freddie asked towards the top of her head. "I figured I'd be dead so I never learned what to expect." Sam, used to occasionally painful childhood afternoons of being sent outside to play, just made a humming noise in the back of her throat, and pulled out the stinger with her tweezers. "Oh wow" Freddie breathed out, ruffling Sam's bangs. His hand immediately went up to touch the suddenly less painful lump on his chin.

"Take off your shirt," Sam commanded.

Freddie boggled. "What?"

"We need to ice it down but the closest we have is a wet shirt. Take it off." She started unbuttoning his short sleeve striped cotton shirt, all business. He had no choice but to comply, shrugging it off his shoulders, watching her fold it and gently press it up along the line of his jaw.

It did feel nice, he thought, watching her bite the edge of her lower lip, looking studiously elsewhere. He helpfully leaned forward, his hands on his knees. She leaned in a little closer and looked straight at him. Freddie closed his eyes. "Thanks for saving my life," he said. The hand holding his shirt against the bee sting shivered a little.

"If you ever do that to me again I'll kill you myself." Sam spoke with a determined grin. She picked up his hand and had him hold the sopping fabric himself. He watched her find his suitcase where she had flung it (impressively far away from the car) in her haste, and bring him back a dry shirt. "Make yourself decent."

Freddie pulled the tshirt over his head. "Hey." Sam came closer again, standing between his legs like before. "So I have a question." He waggled his eyebrows.

Sam lifted the cold cloth back up to his chin again, the angry red welt still distressing her. "What?" she responded absently.

"You would say I'm not allowed to be convinced I'm going to die again for at least the next week, right?" The nervous kicking stopped; Freddie's feet hung still next to her calves.

Sam took a second to parse his question. "Definitely not."

"Good," he said, and suddenly he had her face in his hands, and he leaned down to kiss her hungrily.

Sam gasped into the kiss, her eyes open wide. Freddie stopped kissing her and pulled back a couple of inches, still cupping her cheek. "What?" was all she could get out.

Freddie hooked a leg around the back of her knee and pulled her in by the waist with his free hand. "This morning, you did tell me to let go, didn't you?" He grinned, and Sam started to respond but he just dipped his head in and cut her off.

There had been a smattering of other people with both of them over the last two years, brief relationships lasting a couple weeks or months, but Sam had to wonder, who among the placid-seeming girls had taught Freddie to kiss so aggressively? So confidently? But she thought back to the only kiss they'd shared before these, their first one, and she had a glimpse of the thought that maybe it had been her doing the teaching all along.

She was distracted from her train of thought by a happy moaning noise, and before she realized it had come from her, Freddie was trailing kisses along her cheek and neck and oh, god, he was nibbling in that spot right below her ear. Enough of this, she decided, and she leaned in for his collarbone, licking away the salty sheen of panic from minutes before, smelling the fresh green scent of the river water as she bit gently on the pulse point, eliciting some particularly interesting noises.

Freddie's hands were trailing everywhere, so were Sam's, and neither of them noticed a man in full fishing gear, tacklebox in hand, standing a few yards away from the necking teenagers. The man coughed. They kept kissing furiously. The man cleared his throat. Sam tugged on Freddie's still wet hair, crushing her mouth into his. "Is everything alright?" the man asked, loudly.

Sam stopped her ministrations on Freddie's lower lip and tried to turn around. Freddie didn't even notice; he just moved down to her neck and shoulder as she bent around to look behind her.

"Sorry to, um, interrupt," the man began, as Freddie slowly figured out that Sam wasn't being an active participant anymore and decided to suckle the edge of her ear from behind, "but I have the RV spot next door and I heard quite a ruckus not ten minutes ago."

Sam smacked Freddie's face a bit with one hand, and used the other to stop his roaming fingers that were snaking around her hips. He detached from her with a barely audible popping noise. Sam stifled a laugh. "We, ah, were having some trouble but it's fine now."

The man looked around at their scattered luggage, and the spilled open first aid kit on the ground. "You sure, young lady?" The reflective lures on his vest sparkled as he put a hand to his hip.

Freddie grasped Sam around the waist and leaned out from behind her very mussed hair. "We are fantastic, sir. Thanks for your concern."

"Yes, I'm sure." Sam declared, and the man finally left with a shrug and a meaningful glance at Freddie. They watched his back disappear into the trees, his tacklebox clanking in the distance.

The moment, she was sure, was over. Sam extricated herself from Freddie and started packing up the trunk, not yet processing the past few minutes. Freddie hopped off the cherry red hood of the car; Sam thought he was going to lend a hand. Instead, he got more peanut butter and wheat bread.

He strutted up to Sam with two slices in his hands. "Did you know, Mom told me I would die from peanuts, too? I figured that one out when I was six, though." He watched her heave suitcases, finishing a slice in four giant bites. Sam watched him lick his fingers, holding the second slice in his other hand, pinky-up. He sucked lightly on his index finger, watching her watch him. "Here," he said, and then Sam found the second slice of bread right in front of her face, hovering under her nose. He fed it to her, both her hands full of trip supplies. It was absolutely bizarre. When she finished chewing her way through to his hand, he leaned in and kissed her again, thrumming with satisfaction.

So apparently, the moment was not over. Sam broke the kiss. "Are you going to help, or what?" she demanded.

Freddie cocked his head slightly to the side. "Oh, yeah."

They scurried around, gathering everything together, making sure there was no mess left over. Sam and Freddie slid into the front seats of the Lincoln and Freddie turned the key in the ignition. Sam looked over at him, and he leaned over and kissed her on the temple. When he pulled back she was staring at him reproachfully.

"What, gonna break my arm?" he asked with a sardonic bend to his words, a cheeky grin splashed across his face.

"No. You forgot your seatbelt." She reached across him and buckled him in.

"Ah."

"Take me to San Francisco, you senseless boy!"

Freddie put the car in drive.


	6. Chapter 6

**Told you I'd keep writing it. Further A/N below.**

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Four hours happened in the stretch of years and the blink of seconds. A part of Freddie's brain, the part that was still resolutely terrified of adventure and busy rehashing plots of Deep Space Five, reflected that this must be what pan-dimensional beings must feel like all the time. As he sped down the road, Freddie felt nearly feverish. He'd be frozen in the same pattern of thought, trapped on an eyelash or a sigh, and then flicked on to the next, only to realize that half an hour had passed. He recalled the experience of breaking for sharp turns a good five minutes after doing so.

The windows were all rolled down, letting the wood-spiced air flood the cabin, filling it with a rush of noise and whipping Sam's hair into a frenzy. She was sitting in silence, letting her last instruction linger. He was taking her to San Francisco.

They didn't turn on the radio. They didn't need it, Freddie thought with smug twitch to his lips. But it occurred to him, somewhere when the trees began to thin out, that Sam might be pretty bored. Unlike him, she might not have been replaying their kisses, her teeth on his neck, his hands on her skin, over and over in her head.

Freddie pulled over onto the side of the road, civilization in view just on the edge of the horizon. Sam reached up to pull the now-still hair from her face, but he caught her hand in his, tugging it towards him with a pluck of thumb and forefinger.

He buried his other hand in her hair, sweeping it back for her. She looked at him quizzically and leaned into his hand. Freddie flushed, but hummed pleasantly, having finally done another thing he'd been wanting to do for the last two years.

Sam smiled impishly, inches away from his mouth, his hand a shell around her ear. Freddie waited for her to lean in, and when she didn't, he rolled his eyes. Still no kiss, just a blinking smile and the pulse in the hollow of her throat beating away, warm and steady.

After a moment that felt like a week, she pulled her hand out of his grip and lifted it up to his face, tracing an eyebrow that curved and straightened under her fingertip. She pushed them into a quizzical expression, bent like he had suddenly become dreadfully worried and aroused, somehow at the same time. She hummed, echoing his own buzz of long-reserved satisfaction, and finally leaned in to give him a laughing kiss.

The rest of the drive went quite well, if a bit dangerously; the dam seemed to have broke as they took every chance to touch each other. The towns north of the city provided ample opportunity for stop signs, red lights, and the occasional sixty miles-per-hour thigh-grope.

Ahead of them lay the Golden Gate Bridge. It was early afternoon, the sky was a clear, fogless blue, and the sight of the water again, after their foray into the deep woods, filled Freddie up with a wrenching sensation that started somewhere around his knees and compelled him to pull into the tourist's parking lot.

It was new and strange and altogether far more fantastic than Freddie had ever imagined it would be, walking along the bridge, holding Sam's hand. He was a little shocked with himself, being so damn turned on by it all, considering that he'd been engaging in activities far more risqué than hand holding for the last two hours or so in the car. He caught her looking at him, instead of the view, and he rearranged their fingers, just because he could.

"You thought I would kill you?" Sam asked, once he'd turned back to stare at the sunlight glinting off the water. He took a minute to figure out what, exactly, she was asking.

Freddie tugged her forward, and they leaned on the vermillion barrier, looking down at the ripples of the bay. "Well if you're going to, this is a pretty good place. You could just say it was a suicide."

Sam scowled. "I'm more creative than that, cut me some slack."

"True. You're a crime boss in the making." He bumped her hip with his. "Look! Alcatraz. You can see it when it's clear like this."

The sun was just beginning to be at their backs. The island was small and sharp and brown, stuck in the blue of the bay. Sam stared at it with dark eyes.

Freddie laughed. "Thinking about all your time in the slammer?" He snaked an arm around her hip, thrilling at the contact.

"I haven't be arrested in years," Sam objected.

He leaned in and kissed her on the earlobe, because he could. Then he finished her sentence for her. "Thanks to me and Carly keeping you out of trouble."

Sam grumbled. "I'm not evil, you know. You could have kissed me ages ago and survived." She pulled his arm away from her waist and turned around, leaning back on the barrier, squinting towards the Pacific Ocean. Her face lit up with the afternoon sun as she crossed her arms over her chest. "And I'm not going to end up wasting away in a cell."

Reminded of their innumerable arguments over years past, Freddie shot her a mocking glare, barely able to contain a grin. "If not for us, you wouldn't have graduated middle school, let alone kept out of juvie. Do you even have any life plans, other than 'stay incarcerated as little as possible'?" That one was good, he thought, it had some bite to it. He figured Sam would be proud.

But her face scrunched up with offense. "Of course I do! Plans are important. Goals are important. I know that; jeez, give me some credit! I let you jam your tongue down my throat all day and this is what I get back?" Sam winced when she saw Freddie's face fall. "That came out wrong," she finished, the words sour in her mouth.

There was a pause, and then Freddie replied quietly. "I guess that's it then. We can turn around today and take the fast way home, if you want."

Cars rushed by, heading in, towards the knot of the city, while Sam and Freddie looked very carefully at everything except each other's faces. Freddie hooked his thumbs in his pockets and stared dutifully at his own feet.

So he was knocked off balance a little bit by Sam grabbing his shoulders and kissing him square on the mouth. It was a different sort of kiss than what they'd been doing before. She didn't try to take or push or bite or explore, she didn't move her hands, cupped around the curve of his shoulders in a solid grip. It didn't have the greedy intensity they'd enjoyed all morning; it was empty of physical desire, and full of a sort of promise.

Sam pulled away after a little while, but didn't let go of his shoulders. Freddie's hands were still hooked in his pockets. "I'm in charge of those types of decisions. Let's get back in the car. We've got a plan to keep, and I'm hungry." She turned him around, and marched them back towards the scarlet shape in the parking lot.

Other than instructing him to take the bridge into the city, Sam was quiet. They encountered real traffic for the first time during the trip; the lurching movement made Freddie uncomfortable. He was feeling stuck, mired again, guilty.

"Listen, Sam, I'm sorry." Simpler was probably better, he figured.

She poked him in the arm. "Nah, it's cool. I think I've got it figured out."

He looked sideways at her; she was jabbing at his Pearphone. Freddie tried for humor. "I'm an incredibly complex man, Sam. You can't possibly have it figured out."

She paused in her texting. "You did kinda throw me off this morning," she conceded, "but it makes sense to me now."

Freddie frowned, disliking the idea that he was so easily read. "What makes sense?" he asked.

"Keep driving till I tell you to take an exit," she said by way of response.

An hour later they pulled off the highway into a suburban neighborhood. Sam directed him past pastel houses with fruit trees hanging over backyard fences. It was late afternoon and Freddie was amazed that Sam hadn't passed out from hunger. There wasn't a restaurant to be seen. She pointed out a blue house with a yellow door; it reminded him of a reversal of her mom's house in Seattle. They pulled into the driveway.

"Sam, you know we can't walk into a stranger's house and eat their food." Freddie paused between stretches. "You do know that, right?"

"Take it easy, I got connections." They walked along a small path made up of stones shaped like footprints and rang the doorbell.

A short man with curly white hair opened the door. He had a pair of wire cutters in one hand, and a ham sandwich in the other. Freddie started to frown as the man stared with blinking eyes at Sam. Then recognition dawned on his face.

"Sam! Look at you! You've grown!" He opened his arms wide, and stepped barefoot out onto the little front porch.

"Uncle Vic!" Sam smiled, hugged him back. "You smell like ham. Got any more?"

"What a surprise! Why didn't I know you were coming?" Sam's uncle gave her his sandwich, much to her delight, and turned to notice Freddie for the first time. "And who might you be, young man?"

Freddie reached out his hand to shake Uncle Victor's and began to answer, but Sam interrupted him, speaking with her mouth full. "This is Freddie, y'know, the boy who Mom likes?" Freddie blushed at that.

"Ah, come in, come in, we all don't fit out here." Victor gestured them inside.

Sam sauntered in and Freddie followed, but almost rammed into her backside as she stopped dead, turning her head left and right. "You moved stuff!" she exclaimed, ham sandwich threatening to fling out of her hand.

"After Annie's mom left we had a lot more room. The kitchen's where the den used to be." Victor closed the door behind himself, and gestured for Freddie to follow Sam's path around the corner.

She immediately started opening the fridge and pantry, assembling a snack. "Nice digs, Vic. Marble countertops. Super classy."

"The Pucketts have to keep up with the times, Sam. Only the finest for the family." He winked outrageously towards Freddie and reached between Sam's flying hands to snatch his old sandwich back. "So I take it you're hungry."

Freddie piped up, "We had some peanut butter and toast this morning. It's been a long day." Felt like a few years, maybe twenty minutes, but still a long day. "Sam and I had some time off this summer so we've been going on a road trip, seeing the sights. I didn't know she had family in San Francisco."

"Pish posh, Benson, you didn't know I had family in a house without bars on the windows, is what you're trying to say." Sam had paused between mouthfuls of what was maybe a pasta salad pineapple pesto pizza burrito. Freddie had the grace to look embarrassed at this reply.

Victor started to chuckle. "Don't worry, Freddie. I'm the white sheep of the family." He pointed towards the fridge where, among foot-shaped magnets, were photos of himself in a white lab coat, standing proudly in front of a building labeled Puckett Podiatry in big, orange letters. "Just got my sign redone, the private practice is going spankingly good. Everybody's got foot problems in this town!"

Freddie nodded, not really clear on protocol, and was about to respond with a perfunctory social grunt when Sam was at his side, flush with his hip against the counter.

"Oh my god, Freddie, eat this. Eat it!" She had placed something at his lips; he looked resolutely away from Sam's uncle as he opened his mouth and took a bite. The terrifying conglomeration of leftovers was actually quite yummy, and he nodded with relief.

"Uncle Vic, you don't mind me emptying your kitchen, right?" Sam smiled sweetly, much to Freddie's bemusement. She was even fluttering her eyelashes a little.

Victor rolled his eyes. "I can't expect you to do otherwise. You are your mother's daughter."

Saved from awkward small talk about feet, Freddie made to slink back to his car, when Sam grabbed his shoulder. He turned around, and the side of his face met her lips. "Getting my stuff? Good." Sam turned to Victor while Freddie froze in the moment, terror and elation swimming around behind his eyes. "We can crash here tonight, right? I haven't seen you in years!"

Victor clacked closed the wire cutters he'd been holding in his hands the whole time. He glanced briefly at Freddie, but replied to Sam in gushing tones. "Niece of mine, if you think I'm letting you leave without making you eat all of my food and stealing all my pillows I don't think we can be friends any more."

Freddie escaped to the Loveboat amid laughter. After dragging most of what he thought Sam might deem necessary up through the front door, they spent the majority of the afternoon getting sorted. Blankets on couches, much-needed showers, and ample gossip about the never really shocking, but always fairly scandalous, behavior of the Puckett women filled the rest of the day.

Stepping out of the blessedly steamy shower, Freddie toweled his hair off and counted his blessings. The verve from this morning's natural adrenalin rush was finally dying down – despite a good pile of Sam's miraculous leftover burrito concoction, he found his stomach was grumbling. She had kissed him in front of her uncle, on the cheek, like it was a thing that she did all the time. Like he was her boyfriend.

He almost lost his balance, his knees buckling slightly, and he was briefly filled with horror at the idea of having a stroke and being found naked, head cracked open on the new marble counter, on the bathroom floor in a pool of fire-red blood, by a shocked, laughing Sam. Served him right for thinking he's her boyfriend, she'd point and giggle, and eventually get around to calling the ambulance. Freddie shook the rest of the water out of his hair, and didn't bother to style it.

When he stepped out of the bathroom fully-dressed, and loped down the stairs, he was treated to the sight of Sam tucked up into the corner of the couch, half asleep in a pair of blue kitty cat pajamas, with a teddy bear in her arms. So You Think Fifth Graders Can Dance? was on the television. "Mmm?" she tried to lift her head when Freddie sat down next to her. "All clean" she mumbled, and burrowed her head somewhere around his armpit.

Freddie chuckled at his own madness. Sam was a touch insane, true, but how could he think such terrifying thoughts when she was so incredibly, well, cute? He adjusted her so she was resting in the crook of his arm and pulled what was probably a leftover fladoodle out of her hair. Where did she get the teddy bear from, anyway?

Victor came into the room just as Sam let out a truly epic snore. He sat down on the coffee table and grabbed the remote. "Are you watching this?" At the shake of Freddie's head, he turned the television off. "Come on, let's put her in Annie's room. Upstairs," he gestured, and went up a few steps, looking back at Freddie expectantly.

He was supposed to carry Sam to bed, it seemed. Before he could start worrying about how dense she was, Freddie reached around and scooped her up. She obligingly flung her arms around his neck. Victor nodded and Freddie followed him upstairs into a room with posters plastering the walls.

Once Sam was on the bed, under a quilt, Victor picked up the teddy bear and placed it back in a conspicuous hole among a pile of stuffed animals on an out of place pink dresser. "She'd always steal that from Annie when she was little," Victor explained.

Back downstairs, Freddie surreptitiously stretched his shoulders. Victor pretended not to notice. He had finished with his bonsai trees for the moment – the reason for the wire cutters – and had started to chop vegetables for dinner. Freddie suspected he had passed some kind of test, because Victor was tossing him pieces of radish to snack on while the chicken roasted. Maybe he had carried Sam with sufficient aplomb?

"So, going on a road trip, eh?" The small talk began again.

"I got a car this February, so we've been planning this for a while, yeah."

"Planning since winter and yet Sam didn't tell you I was here? What were you going to do for room and board before me?" He had progressed through radishes, on to carrots. The knife tock tock tocked against the cutting board.

Freddie turned up the corner of his mouth. "Sam sort of, well, you know, she said she'd take care of things and I kind of let it be. We have this agreement, maybe, it's working out okay. I think." He flashed briefly to Sam's tongue in his mouth that morning. Working out okay. He leaned lazily against the countertop where Sam had pressed herself against him that afternoon, feeding him food in an out of character display of generosity.

Victor pulled out a cucumber and looked at it critically. He put down his chef's knife and took out a cleaver.

"I guess originally we were going to get a hotel room," Freddie explained, about to tell him about the extremely short man in Newport.

The cleaver whacked through the tip of the cucumber. "Freddie?"

"Yes?"

"What exactly are your intentions with my niece?" Victor was staring hard into his eyes, the cleaver smacking through the cucumber methodically.

Freddie stared at the vegetable as it was sliced down its girthy length in perfect rounds. He swallowed. "Um, Victor. Please don't misunderstand me, I - "

"Doctor Puckett." Thwack thwack thwack.

"Doctor Puckett," Freddie corrected, "we're best friends, really, have been for years." He straightened up, hands on the counter, unsure of how and where he'd gone wrong.

Victor grumbled under his breath. "The Puckett women," he began after a pause, "are not to be trifled with."

At this, Freddie couldn't help but laugh. He stopped at the flash of Victor's eyes. "You think I don't know that? Sam could have me flayed alive in twenty seconds flat if she thought it'd be funny enough."

"That's not what I mean."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Oh."

Freddie attempted a different tack. "I'd never do anything to hurt Sam, Doctor Puckett." Victor raised an eyebrow. "Seriously, I practically owe her my life twice over by now. Even if I didn't like her so much I wouldn't ever screw around with her like that."

"You're sleeping on the couch and she's in Annie's room tonight." Victor pointed at the living room with a long fork, and then plunged it into the chicken.

With a relieved laugh, Freddie replied, "I wouldn't dream of anything else, sir."

Sam traipsed down the stairs as Victor finished carving up the chicken, still in her kitty cat pajamas. "Excellent nap!" she proclaimed.

Victor gave Freddie the side-eye as they carried platters into the dining room.

Soon enough, Sam was picking at a chicken carcass, sitting cross-legged in her chair. Freddie had politely listened to Victor talk about his beloved bonsais, the ins and outs of wire-wrapping tiny branches, for a good half and hour.

"I started them for Annie. She's down in LA now, but when she was little her favorite movie was the Karate Kid."

"I met Annie, right, Sam?"

Sam looked up from her drumstick. "She put my face on your arm. Laughed for days. Good times!"

"That was the last time we visited Pam." Victor's eyes crinkled up at the corners. "If I had known what Annie was up to when she was visiting your friend, well. I wouldn't have been able to stop her, I suppose."

Freddie grumbled, rubbing his shoulder from the memory.

"Anyway, I couldn't be a karate master, but I figured I could make bonsai like Mister Miyagi. Turns out I loved it, so now when I'm not fixing feet I'm fixing trees."

With a start, Freddie nearly dropped the fork he was using to finish off bits of salad on his plate. There was something on his calf. He looked across the table at Sam. She was still gnawing on a bone, but she wasn't cross-legged any more. It was her foot. She was playing footsie with him. Freddie shivered involuntarily as her bare foot rubbed up and down the shaft of his leg.

"It's the shoes!" continued Victor. "We shouldn't be wearing shoes if we don't have to. They mess up your feet – makes the balance out of whack, trains the toes wrong." He was oblivious to Freddie's predicament. Sam smirked, not making eye contact, but trailing around his own socked feet with her bare toes. The sensations shot straight up his legs, following an inevitable path to his crotch, where he began vibrating and buzzing.

"Is that your phone ringing?" Victor paused in his rant about footwear proclivities of the rich and able.

"Oh thank god," Freddie breathed, and excused himself from the table.

"Fredward Benson, I was expecting you to call me! Have you been eating food on our pre-approved list of healthy options?" His mothers' voice scythed through Freddie's foggy brain.

"Chicken's good, right? We had a salad, too. Cucumbers, radishes, carrots. How's your retreat going?" He tried to change the subject, but to no avail.

"We? Who's we? Are you having strangers in our house?"

"No, Mom, I ate with friends. I'm sorry I didn't call before dinner. It's been a busy day! You know how summers get. Lots of projects."

Seemingly placated, Marissa's tone of voice changed abruptly. "Well, okay. But don't eat too much gluten. And don't overexert yourself! Seattle can get quite hot and the last thing we need is for you to get heat stroke."

"The mountains are nice, then?" Freddie fidgeted with the tassel on a couch pillow, trying to keep the fact that he wasn't in Seattle out of his voice. Maybe she could hear the ambient noise through the phone. Could his mom tell the difference between suburban San Francisco traffic and suburban Seattle traffic?

He let his mind run its course as she went on about cleansing breaths and the toothbrushing habits of her roommate. It felt like ages since he'd heard her voice, even though he knew it was only yesterday. Sam walked past, carrying some bowls to the sink. She mouthed "Mom?" to him. Freddie nodded, lifted a hand to his head, and shot his brains out, collapsing against the arm of the couch. She continued on into the kitchen.

Marissa was winding down. "I'll call you tomorrow, Mom, promise. Before dinner. I swear. Don't worry too much." It was futile, he knew, to ask her not to worry at all, but moderation was key. Sam came back from the kitchen and sat down onto the couch next to him. She grabbed the remote and turned the tv back on, flipping to something with a grizzly crime scene.

"And how's the folks?" Sam inquired after Freddie hung up.

"The folks is fine. Paranoid that I'm going to eat too much gluten."

Sam's shoulders shuddered in a silent chuckle. "We'll go to Chinatown tomorrow, and make her fears a reality."

"Is that the plan?" Freddie decided that leaning into her was an acceptable move. She responded by covering them both with the blanket Victor had provided.

"Part of the plan, at least. Uncle Vic said he'd drive us into town so we wouldn't have to worry about parking." Sam smoothed the blanket and patted her stomach, pleasantly full of home-cooked meal.

"You gonna tell me the rest of the plan any time soon?"

"No." She burped. Cutely. Freddie was definitely still a little off-kilter from the days' events.

Mid-autopsy, Victor leaned around the corner from the kitchen, and looked pointedly at Sam. "If we're going into the city tomorrow I have to leave early."

Freddie smacked Sam lightly on the arm. "Time for bed."

After a brief argument about it being too early, Sam started to yawn uncontrollably. This started Freddie yawning and then Victor yawned and then it was inarguably bed time for everyone involved. Sam extricated herself from the blanket and flung a pillow into Freddie's face.

Victor showed Freddie how the couch pulled out into a perfectly acceptable bed, and took his leave. Stretching out for the first time in a while, Freddie's knees popped with relief. He'd been awake since the crack of dawn, pushed into a river, thought he was going to die, spent most of the day driving, been emotionally garroted and delighted multiple times, and had crossed the gauntlet of Puckett familial approval all in one day.

Snores filled the living room in less than two minutes.

Hours later, the moon had risen and flooded the room with a pale light. The stairs creaked, but Freddie slept on. Sam picked her way through the semi-darkness and climbed under the blanket.

"Can't sleep in there. Shouldn't have had that nap." Sam curled up along Freddie's side.

He startled awake. "Bzuh?" He rolled over and looked at her through sleepy eyes.

"Don't worry. I'll leave before dawn. I couldn't sleep. Doesn't matter." She put a hand on his hot forehead and pressed him back down into his pillow.

"Mmkay. Bananas." Freddie declared, his eyes closed. He felt Sam's feet rub up against his own, and she grabbed his arm like the teddy bear she had had earlier that day. Freddie leaned over and kissed blindly in her general direction. He met what was probably her forehead. Good enough, he supposed, and passed back out again.

* * *

**A/N: Hrmm, something's up, don't you think?**

**Thanks for continuing to read and review this story! I know I've been MIA in fandom and I don't intend to get back on that horse any time soon, but I said I'd finish this story and that's still the plan. I was recently inspired to wrap up this chapter (which I had two thousand words of floating around for a year or something) due to Sam's mom being named Pam. The littlest things! Anyway, I still do read and truly appreciate all of your reviews, and I intend to continue this fic until I've told the story I wanted to tell in the first place. By now, of course, it's so AU I might as well call it original fiction, but, whatchagonnado? I haven't got any further chapters written so far, but I'm trying my best to ride out this inspiration bug as far as I can. Keep your eyes peeled for more within the month. **

**Let me know what you think! Thanks for slogging through the LONGEST CHAPTER EVER, by the way. Dialogue and introducing new characters - harder than it seems!  
**


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